The Tradie Lady Pt 3

I Really Put My Foot in It

You’ve heard of putting your back into it but I seriously put my foot in it. Wait, what are you thinking of?

Most of the time I’d spent renovating a house in Queensland this past month, was the perfect mix of enjoyable and exhausting. At the end of each day, physically wiped out, all I really had the energy for was whipping up a simple meal and collapsing on the couch. The $50 couch I bought from the Vinnies store down the road, which was exactly half of the entire furniture in the ‘renovators dream’ I was residing in. The other statement piece of furniture, saved me, a mattress from Sleeping Duck that is the most comfortable night’s sleep I’ve had, except for maybe that time I was randomly upgraded to Business Class on a flight home from LA, once. Days spent renovating are long and the night-nights were restorative. Those nights, I have not slept better. Be it the long days or the totally comfortable, ‘I actually could stay in this bed all day’ mattress, or a combination of the two, I valued my sleep during this fixer upper month more than I have since I hosted breakfast radio.

There was one day, that I just wasn’t having a good time, I was most likely not the most favourite person on-site on this particular day. And let me clarify, there were two people on-site. Myself (in a mood) and my husband (casual and lovely). It was hot, like 40 degrees hot, I was painting an awkward hand rail, not that the hand rail was awkward, the hand rail was perfectly constructed, but painting in between the slats of a hand rail, and on the ‘other’ side to the deck, was where I was struggling. I was over it. Literally, bending over the top of the hand rail with my giant, paint soaked paint brush to get right in between the corners.

I realised, the start and the end of on-site projects, such as, paint the hand rail around the entire house, are good. You start with gusto, you are into it, The Greatest Showman soundtrack is blaring through your speakers, you’ve just had a soda water with fresh lime, you're hydrated, you’ve got this. But after the soundtrack ends, you’ve head-butted the hand rail and left paint in your hair, thrice, dropped the paintbrush and missed the drop sheet, you’re dehydrated, you're hot, not in the sexy way that Nelly sings about, just gross hot, sweaty hot, your top knot falls out and your back hurts, it’s not so much fun.

It was at this moment, let’s call it breaking point; when I had a massive fail. Which technically was almost a massive fall, had my weary body not been stabilised by lightening quick reflexes and perfectly placed paint tray. As I was thinking to myself, ‘renovating this house was a stupid idea,’ and listing all the reasons why this was dumb, I hated it and I felt like crap, I lost my balance slightly. I was on solid ground, not on the roof, hanging off a ladder, on top of a wardrobe or inside a pantry, as I had been during the previous week. I was just leaning over the top of the hand rail, trying to get to that one corner bit that I just couldn’t reach… as I came up for air a bit too quickly, my top knot flopped over to one side and I lost my balance. Now, I have good balance, I was a gymnast in the 90s, but the combination of paint fumes, 40 degrees and an oversized tee shirt just wasn’t working for me. To regain my balance, I naturally, stepped backwards, to save myself from ending up flat on my back under the newly built rafters. This is when my whole entire foot went straight into the just filled to the brim paint tray. Brilliant. White. The entire sole of my Dunlop Volley was now stuck in a paint tray, it was the perfect fit, like Cinderella and the glass slipper only with more of a Construction vibe.

If this was Brooklyn 99 and I was Detective Boyle, this situation would have been hilarious to me. But this was me on a bad day, bad hair day and I was over it. I didn’t even laugh. Not even a tiny LOL about probably the funniest thing that has happened to me in days. I dislodged the soaked sole and let my now brilliant white Dunlop Volley dry out in the sun, as I slid into the air-conditioning for a break. After a drink of water and few out loud sighs, I finished painting the hand rail, in a pair of ankle socks.

It took me 24 hours to be able to laugh about the foot in paint incident, it was the next day over lunch I said to my husband, ‘remember that time I stepped into an entire paint tray with my entire foot?’ and we both cracked up laughing as we looked across to the offending shoe which remained on the drop sheet outside on the deck, perfectly white, below the beautiful hand rail complete with a fresh coat of paint.